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Mental Calculation Strategies Primary How to acquire mental addition and subtraction skills: A review of text books available to support Initial Teacher Education students. Sue Davis: University of Leicester Abstract Trainee teachers in the England have to pass a mathematics skills test, which includes a section focusing on mental mathematics. In addition, all generalist primary school teachers are expected to teach mental mathematics strategies to children from 5 to 11 years of age, although many of these students have never been taught strategies themselves and therefore feel unprepared (Davis, 2009). What support is available to them to address this? This paper reviews the mental mathematics components of some of the key texts used by many Initial Teacher Education students, focusing on addition and subtraction strategies, and considers the extent to which these texts prepare students to teach mental strategies in school. I link these strategies and the representations displayed in the texts to research in this field and propose ways of enhancing the learning of these students which will ultimately impact on the future teaching of these key skills. Key words: Mental Calculation Strategies; Primary ITE Students; Textbooks; Addition; Subtraction. As a University tutor with eight years’ experience of teaching both undergraduate and post graduate students training to be primary school teachers in the United Kingdom, I have observed that for many of these students there are a number of issues relating to the learning of the subject knowledge of mathematics which are not replicated in any other subject. In the UK very few primary teachers are specialists in mathematics, coming from all types of educational backgrounds. There is a minimum mathematics qualification requirement (Grade C at GCSE or equivalent) and often student teachers have received no mathematics education themselves since they achieved this qualification at the age of 16. As a result of this, often the first book that many students purchase, even before enrolment on a course, is a text book to support their knowledge, skills and understanding of the primary mathematics taught in school today. As I am particularly interested in mental calculation strategies I thought it would be important to look at some of the key professional texts which aim to support generalist teachers of primary mathematics and consider the extent to which they support students’ learning of mental addition and subtraction skills. Although there are a number of different types of subject knowledge within mathematics, particularly pertaining to primary teachers (Goulding, Rowland and Barber, 2002; Shulman, 1986), for the purposes of this article I intend to consider subject content knowledge of students (as opposed to pedagogical knowledge). 1 The majority of students entering the teaching profession in England at the moment are those who have been educated after the publication of the influential Cockcroft Report (DES, 1982). This report highlighted the inability of a significant percentage of the UK adult population to apply the mathematics learned at school to their everyday lives, and who admitted to having a lack of confidence in the subject. Since the publication of this report there have been two radical changes in the teaching of mathematics in England, namely the introduction and subsequent revisions of the National Curriculum and a decade later the National Numeracy Strategy (DfEE, 1999) both of which aimed to raise standards in mathematics. However, this concern about the arithmetic ability of British society is not a new one, as can be noted by the comments of a senior member of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) who raised concerns in 1869 that teachers were keener to ensure children were passing examinations than they were to ensure they really understood the mathematics taught (Howson, cited in Brown 1999). One hundred and forty years later there are many who would argue that, as judgements about the quality of schools and teachers are based on test and examination results, the same is still true. This might also explain why, despite the changes in the school curriculum, I am still finding that there appears to be a lack of confidence in basic numeracy skills amongst student teachers who all achieved at least a grade C in their GCSE exams. The particular skills that I am interested in here are those relating to mental calculation strategies, as the initial findings from previous research (Davis, 2009) indicate that many young adults do not possess a wide range of such strategies. In order to be recommended for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) in England all student teachers (primary or secondary) have to pass skills tests in literacy, numeracy and ICT. The first part of the numeracy QTS skills test is designed to test their mental calculation skills, which appears to be the most challenging part of this test for most primary students. The idea behind this mental section was to ensure, ‘trainees have an acceptable level of mental agility and recall to aid their interpretation, use and application of numerical information e.g. to be able to calculate mentally in everyday situations’ (DfEE, 1998:7). The tenet underpinning the National Numeracy Project was that ‘the ability to calculate mentally lies at the heart of numeracy’ (Straker, 1999) but it would appear that the majority of current primary Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students in the UK, who just missed out on benefiting from this aspect of current teaching, have not acquired this ability during their education so far. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that they struggle with the mental section of the skills test and lack the confidence to teach mental maths in school. There are many who advocate that the ability to select from a range of strategies is vital to show that a child is ‘numerate’ (Askew, 1999; DfEE, 1999; Evans, 2000). A numerate child, therefore, would be expected to choose a different strategy to calculate 201 – 198 than they might when calculating 76 – 11, although it is hoped that both of these would be calculated mentally rather than using a written method. If we are to accept that this area of mathematics is key to being numerate, and 2 assuming that we would wish our primary teachers to be numerate, I thought it would be interesting to critically analyse three ‘textbooks’ which are commonly recommended to support the subject knowledge of student teachers, to see how they support the learning of mental strategies for addition and subtraction. I began by considering how much of each book was devoted to this key area of mathematics. Haylock’s popular book (2006), now with its fourth edition in the pipeline, has an entire chapter (twelve pages) devoted to mental strategies for addition and subtraction, beginning with an explanation of the commutative and associative laws. He includes a summary of some research carried out in Australia which is pertinent to mental calculations and the chapter is set out clearly with useful headings to guide the reader. At the end of the chapter there is guidance for further reading, a range of assessment questions, a glossary of any new terms introduced and a link to the relevant examples on the CD that is included with the book. This level of commitment to mental mathematics was not so evident in the two further books that I initially chose to review. Suggate, Davis and Goulding (2001) embed their references to mental calculation strategies for addition and subtraction within a chapter which also includes counting, place value and written calculation methods. There are about two pages for mental addition and less than one and a half for mental subtraction strategies. At the end of the chapter, however, there is reference in the summary to the importance of developing ‘robust mental methods’ (2001:73) and on the same page there is also a recommendation that students discuss the statement, ‘The traditional written algorithms are past their sell-by date’. Reassuringly, since the publication of this book in 2001, Suggate, Davis and Goulding have acknowledged the increased importance of mental methods of calculation. The third edition of their text has now been published (2006) and in total almost five pages are now devoted to mental methods of addition and subtraction. A CD has also been included to enable students to practise choosing from a selection of methods, with representations including counters, tens and units blocks, number lines and number squares offered to model these processes. The final book that I chose to review was the most surprising. Mooney et al (2009) set their references to mental calculation strategies within a very useful chapter on number. This chapter covers every aspect of number from the written methods currently used for each of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) to fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio and proportion. It also explains the laws of arithmetic, rational and irrational numbers and how to represent numbers in index and standard forms. These 34 pages form a reasonably comprehensive overview of our number system but there is less than half a page devoted to both mental addition and subtraction combined. Bearing in mind the current focus on teaching these skills it is surprising that this is not seen as a priority. 3 Having considered the amount of space devoted to mental calculation strategies in general, I moved on to looking at the strategies chosen by each author and how they used diagrams and other images to support the understanding of these examples. Haylock (2006) begins his examples by explaining how important it is for children to be able to count forwards and backwards in units, tens and hundreds, from any given number, which he calls an ‘essential prerequisite for effective mental calculation’ (2006:45). He follows this with an explanation of how we can use multiples of ten as ‘stepping stones’ to aid both addition and subtraction.
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